No Further

by Andy Maslen

The driver led his crew down the bank. Then he held up his right hand for them to stop.

  “Wait a second,” he said. “Do we know if they’re armed?”

  “Shouldn’t be, Boss,” the Belgian said. “Blacksmith said they’re clean till they get to the base.”

  “OK, fine. But be careful. I’m not gonna get killed in a contact with two fuckers in a cow field.”

  Together, Gabriel and Eli pulled and pushed the rusted steel prong. The point of attachment to the frame of the harrow was a nut and bolt, half-rusted through itself and showering reddish-brown flakes as they worked the steel back and forth. Gabriel snatched a look over Eli’s shoulder. No sign of the enemy. But it wouldn’t be long. The prong squawked in protest, then snapped off.

  Without talking, they moved on to its neighbour, frantically wrestling the steel prong against its fastener. Gabriel glanced up again.

  “They’re here. Come on, we need this one.”

  Sawing the prong backwards and forwards they broke it free with a loud snap. They ducked behind the oak tree’s thick, gnarled trunk.

  “They won’t split up. If they come at us from two sides they’ll be in each other’s field of fire,” Eli said. “What’s their range?”

  “Hundred yards. I can’t see what they’re carrying. No longs. Assuming Glocks or similar, effective range is only fifty-five yards.”

  She nodded towards a wood on the left side of the field behind them.

  “They’ll kill us out here. It’s a turkey shoot. In the woods we have a chance.”

  Gabriel nodded. Held up three fingers. Watched Eli shift her weight, so the muscles bunched beneath her trousers. Two. One.

  They sprinted away from the oak tree, each carrying one of the rusted prongs.

  From behind them, Gabriel heard a shout. But no shots. Professionals, then. No well-trained soldier willingly wastes ammunition. The woods were only forty yards away. Then Eli stumbled and went over with a scream. He pulled up and ran back to her.

  “It’s my ankle,” she said through gritted teeth.

  He hauled her to her feet and pulled her arm over his shoulder. Together, they limp-ran to the woods, hopping and skipping in a bizarre parody of a children’s three-legged race. The field was edged with a two-strand fence of barbed wire. Gabriel stripped off his sweatshirt and laid it on the upper strand then rolled Eli over it before vaulting it himself.

  A shot ripped through the leaves above them. Then a second and a third. The last one hit the trunk of a tree to their left, sending honey-coloured wood chips flying back towards them. One pointed shard caught Gabriel on the side of the face; he felt the impact but no pain. Too much adrenaline for that.

  “Get me over there!” Eli said.

  Gabriel followed her pointing finger. A rotting log lay in a wide puddle of stagnant water.

  He dragged her to the log and she rolled over and submerged herself into the boggy ground on its far side.

  Then he dashed away, off to the side, pushing through the trees before working his way back towards the fence twenty yards from where they had entered the wood.

  The driver swore as the man on his left fired three shots at the running targets.

  “Fucking hell, man. Hold your fire. The last thing we want is some farmer calling the cops before we’re done.”

  “I thought I had a shot.”

  “Yeah, well, wait for my order next time or I dock your pay.”

  The man offered a reluctant, “Sorry, Boss.”

  “Right. They’re in there somewhere. She’s injured – you saw her go over, and she was limping when she got up. He practically had to carry her. Neither of them has a weapon. Remember that village we cleared outside Kinshasa?” The other men nodded. “We do it like that. Spread out, and only fire ahead. I don’t want any fucking crossfire. You put a target down, you shout ‘One out.’ Make sure they’re dead. Two to the head whatever they look like. I hear two shouts and we’re done. I’ll call ‘back’ and we exfil to the car.”

  The Female of the Species …

  The water was cold on Eli’s skin. It smelt sour. Her ankle was sending out jolts of pain every few seconds. She reached down into the water and pressed gently against the flesh all around the joint. It was swollen, but not broken. She was sure of that. Hurt like fuck, though. She could bear weight on the other leg, no problem. And an IDF fighter with one leg was worth four fucking mercenaries any day of the week. Even on a Saturday.

  She gripped the hooked steel prong tighter. The tip of the hook was pointed. But that was the end she intended to hold. She checked out the other end. Even better. The jagged break contained three vicious points, all bound in a matrix of rust.

  From the other side of the log she could hear the mercs getting closer. Then a voice uttered a command for which she thanked God.

  “Spread out.”

  She heard booted feet crashing off into the woods away from her on both sides. Then a lone guttural voice speaking in German that she mentally translated.

  “Die Zeit des Sprechens is vorbei. Jetzt ist es Zeit zu sterben.” Talk time’s over. Now it’s time to kill.

  She heard the man’s boots squishing through the mud as he approached the log. She readied herself, drawing her knees up and pushing her good foot down into the mud, getting purchase on harder ground beneath.

  She waited. Would he vault the log or climb over? It spanned the path completely so he wouldn’t go round.

  A broad, hairy hand splayed itself out on the top of the log. She saw the tips of the fingers. In slowed-down, hyper-alert combat time, she noticed his fingernails were bitten to the quick.

  She thrust upwards on her good leg and brought the prong down like a dagger onto the back of his hand, pinning him to the wood.

  He opened his mouth to scream, but she silenced him with a straight-fingered jab into the soft place just below his Adam’s apple. His blue eyes bulged, and he began bringing the barrel of the pistol round.

  But he was already dead.

  Eli smashed the heel of her right hand hard against the underside of his nose. She heard the crunch as the thin bones snapped, and she carried on shoving so the sharp-pointed bone splinters entered his frontal cortex. His eyes rolled upwards in his skull, and he swung round the pivot created by his skewered hand to thump onto his back against the upper surface of the log.

  She grabbed the pistol the dead man still clutched in his right hand. I may be slow. But now I’m deadly , she thought. Correction. Deadlier . Then she looked in the direction Gabriel had taken.

  Is More Deadly

  The man tracking him was big. Maybe an advantage out in the open, though Gabriel doubted it, but here? In close cover? No. A big body held you back, whether you were in a Bornean jungle or a dense Norwegian pine forest. Or in mixed deciduous woodland on the outskirts of an English market town. A big body was harder to squeeze through small gaps between trees, or stout bamboo stalks. Heavier to pull free of bogs. And more difficult to move silently.

  Breathing shallowly though his nose, and somehow finding time to appreciate the loamy scent rising from the ground, Gabriel waited, hunkered down in a thicket of whippy sycamore saplings, dog roses and bracken. He’d smeared his face and hands with mud, and stuck dry bracken fronds, twigs and handfuls of yanked-out soft-leaved weeds into his clothes to improvise a sniper’s ghillie suit.

  In his right hand, he held the spike-tipped harrow prong. In his left, a piece of wood the approximate size and shape of a large loaf of bread. Straining his ears, he tried to get a fix on his pursuer. Gabriel had led the man away from Eli. He knew the man was alone. Like Eli, Gabriel had heard the order to spread out.

  A splash and a muttered oath came from his right.

  “Fuck!”

  Then footsteps, crunching over a patch of twigs and dried leaves.

  Overconfident, my friend. And it’s going to cost you.

  Mud-crusted eyes trained on the man who’d appeared five feet to his right, Gabriel gripped the log tighter. He�
��d left just enough space to his side for the action he performed now. In a smooth back and forth motion, he hefted the log out of the thicket, over the man’s head, and into the trees. As the log crashed to the ground, the man drew down on the spot and fired three shots in quick succession.

  The deafening reports of the Sig meant he didn’t hear Gabriel launch himself out from his hide. Before the man could take a step towards the source of the crash, Gabriel had grabbed his head with his left hand and was swinging his right hand inwards, fingers curled tightly round the steel prong. Like Eli, Gabriel had elected to use the bent end as a handle, which meant the end that pierced the man’s neck was similarly jagged.

  The man gasped as the point entered his throat and dropped his pistol to scrabble at Gabriel’s left hand. The gasp turned to a gurgle as Gabriel pushed his hand forward, tearing the carotid artery and jugular vein. The gurgle was choked off as Gabriel clamped his free hand over the man’s mouth. He pulled the prong free, releasing a torrent of blood that washed down the man’s chest, and stabbed back again, into his heart. Then he held him tightly, leaning backwards, waiting for the resistance to go from his captive’s muscles. It didn’t take long.

  Gabriel patted the torso down and found a spare magazine for the Sig. He pocketed it, took the pistol and set off back towards Eli’s last position.

  The fallen log bore witness to Eli’s fighting skills. Pinned to its upper surface like a grotesque specimen in a Victorian entomologist’s collection was a dead man. No gun , Gabriel noted. Excellent. Two on two. Hardly fair odds .

  A shot rang out through the woodland. Then silence.

  Gabriel ran in the direction of the shot. He kept his pistol out in front of him, but couldn’t risk delaying by moving stealthily. To hell with them! I’ll kill them all if they’ve hurt her.

  After ten seconds, he emerged into a small clearing, its floor crunchy with empty beechnut cases. On the far side, a figure lay splayed out, facedown, as if they’d bellyflopped out of a tree.

  He stopped dead.

  “Oh, fuck! Eli!” he muttered.

  Looking around the perimeter of the clearing first, he made his way straight across the centre in a crouching run. Then someone spoke in a sardonic voice from the trees on the far side.

  “What the fuck are you doing that for?”

  Than the Male?

  It was Eli’s voice. Gabriel straightened, his insides easing as the anxiety he had been swamped by just a second ago evaporated. She emerged from the cover of a thick-trunked beech, supporting herself on a crutch she’d fashioned from a branch. He ran over to greet her, casting a quick look at the body on the ground. The back of the skull had exploded and what was left of the man’s brain was exposed. His pistol lay a few inches from his outflung right hand.

  “You got one, too,” Eli said, pointing at Gabriel’s Sig.

  “Yes. We should write a thank you letter to the farmer.”

  A shot from behind Gabriel shattered the silence. Both he and Eli dived sideways and rolled over into prone firing positions. Each fired two groups of three, closely-spaced shots in the direction of the shooter. Then, keeping their weapons up, they shuffled backwards into the trees behind them, where Eli had been hiding.

  “Will he run, do you think?” Eli said.

  “Not a chance. Guys like that only go forwards. He knows it’ll be his head on the block if he can’t report a successful mission to his boss.”

  “Good. Then you get round to him and I’ll keep him busy. Wait! I’ll shoot to his right and drive him left. You intercept him.”

  Gabriel nodded, backed away, then rolled onto his stomach and began working his way round the edge of the clearing, anti-clockwise. He counted shots fired. A Sig P229 held up to 15 rounds, depending on the magazine fitted. He checked his own. Yes, it held the maximum capacity mag. Its original user had fired three, Gabriel, six. That left six, assuming the previous owner hadn’t chambered a round then topped off the mag. Plus a further fifteen in the spare mag. He hadn’t seen Eli check the other dead man for a spare mag. Counting the round she’d put into his skull, and the six she’d fired as they dove for cover, that left no more than eight rounds. Maybe fewer if he’d been the initial shooter. Twenty-nine rounds between them. Against a single enemy combatant with fourteen in the pistol he carried and one or maybe two spare mags. So up to forty-four rounds.

  “It’s a numbers game, Old Sport.”

  Too fucking right, Boss. Two against one. Thirty against forty-four. I just hope the result is two and not one.

  Behind him, Eli had started shooting. Single shots, spaced about a second apart. Gabriel counted as he belly-crawled round the clearing, slithering over the boggy ground. He reached eight and waited. His heart was thumping. He took a few measured breaths to bring it under control. Ahead, he heard a crackle of dry undergrowth. He shuffled sideways and pulled some old bracken over his head and shoulders.

  Then Eli started up again. Groups of three shots interspersed with double-taps and singles. You took the second pistol. And hopefully the spare mag. Now you sound like two shooters.

  Under the fusillade of shots, the remaining man quickened his pace. Gabriel heard the distinct sounds as the man’s boots hit the ground. He wasn’t even trying to keep quiet. Probably figured it didn’t matter as his targets were stationary and wouldn’t be able to hear him over the noise of their pistols.

  Then the man, big like the others, appeared a few feet from Gabriel’s nose. He was looking ahead, not down or from side to side. Gabriel let him go past, then rolled onto his back, lifted his head up so he was looking down between his feet, took aim centre-mass, and fired. The bullet entered just to the left of the man’s spine. The man stumbled as the back of his jacket exploded outwards with a spray of blood and cloth fragments. He fell to his knees, tried to raise his own pistol, dropped it, then collapsed forwards. Gabriel leapt out of his hiding place and grabbed his former assailant. Rolled him onto his front. No exit wound on his torso, so probably a hollow-point round, unless it had lodged in a bone or taken the scenic route and exited somewhere unlikely, like his groin.

  He was still breathing, raggedly, coughing out sprays of bright red, foamy blood. So the round had shredded a lung, even if it hadn’t hit any of the large-bore blood vessels in his chest.

  “Who sent you?” Gabriel said.

  The man’s eyes were rolling like a stunned beast’s. He was groaning from the pain of his wound. Gabriel tried again.

  “Who sent you?”

  The man coughed. A gout of blood spurted from his lips.

  “Blacks …”

  “Blacks? Which blacks?”

  But the man was beyond replying.

  Gabriel took the man’s pistol and stuck it into the back of his waistband.

  Then he walked back to Eli’s position. She was sitting propped up with her back to the beech tree.

  “Four for four?” she asked, looking up at Gabriel.

  “Four for four. Let’s get going. You need attention for that ankle and you’ve a cut on your forehead.”

  “Me? Have you seen your face recently?”

  Gabriel reached a hand up and felt his left cheek. Inspected his fingers. No blood. Mud, yes. But no claret. He tried the other cheek. Winced. His fingers came away red.

  “OK, it’s a scratch. Let’s go.”

  “Maybe lose the salad first, eh?”

  She reached for his collar and withdrew a clump of wild garlic.

  Gabriel smiled, then he shook off, pulled out, and untangled his makeshift ghillie suit. He pulled Eli upright and took care to give her time and space to plant her weight over her good foot.

  “No, wait. I want their phones,” he said. “Give me five minutes, OK?”

  “Fine. I’ll just sit here on my arse admiring the wildlife.”

  Gabriel sprinted away from her, heading for the last man he’d shot. Then the first. He circled back to the man pinned to the log, then back through the wood to the clearing, where he retrie
ved the fourth phone.

  “They’ll all be locked, but maybe Don knows a man who can,” he said. “Now, ready to go?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  When they reached the mangled Ford, Gabriel reached in through the smashed driver’s window and pulled the keys from the ignition. He unlocked the boot and retrieved their bags.

  “Wait here,” he said.

  He unzipped his bag and placed one of the two pistols inside. Then he clambered up the bank beyond the thin scrim of trees and, keeping low, made his way to the parked GLS. The SYUV was empty: no backup man. Thankfully, the driver had left the keys in the ignition. He could have hotwired it without them, but it was a small effort he didn’t have to make. He pressed the tailgate release switch and, once the automated gas rams had done their job, threw his bag into the loadspace.

  He scrambled back down the bank and repeated the process with Eli’s bag, dropping the pistol inside first. Finally, he made the last trip, pushing, pulling, supporting and dragging Eli up the bank with him, ignoring her swearing as her injured ankle caught on the undergrowth.

  They reached the car, and Gabriel retrieved a bottle of water from one of the cupholders.

  “I’m not drinking from that!” Eli said.

  “Nor am I. But we should try to clean ourselves up a little before we arrive at the camp.”

  “Good point. You look like a wild man of the woods.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re no oil painting yourself!”

  They cleaned each other’s faces, then dressed their cuts with sticking plasters from the first aid kit stowed behind an elastic cargo net in the loadspace.

  Gabriel climbed into the driver’s seat, twisted the key in the ignition and turned on the air conditioning. He pushed the engine start button in and felt, rather than heard the big engine wake up. Beside him, Eli was leaning forwards and massaging her ankle.

  “It’s not sprained. I don’t think so, anyway,” she said. “Still hurts like buggery, though.”